Theater

By Jean-Luc Lagarce

Nancy S. BishopFebruary 15, 2015Chicago, IL A bare stage. There’s only a curtain, a stool, a pair of high-heeled shoes, and a trunk. But here three actors create a magical environment, an environment of beauty and bleakness about their fading careers as cabaret performers: The Artiste ...

A creepy premise, a great cast, and deft direction cannot redeem this drama from its own shortfalls.

Karen WeinsteinFebruary 9, 2015Los Angeles, CA "Reborning." The meaning is as crazy as it sounds. Reborning is the act of creating an individual infant doll in the precise image of a child whom a parent has lost. People (mostly women) pay mucho dinero for these creepy ...

David E. MorenoFebruary 9, 2015San Francisco, CA If a trusted friend came to you enthusiastically and said, quite seriously, “Let’s go hear a performance of early Shaker spirituals,” you’d probably just stare back a him with a concerned expression and say, ...

Audiences may find themselves asking: Is this a comedy or the saddest family tragedy since “King Lear”?

Suzanne WeissFebruary 7, 2015San Francisco, CA The Lyons sure can roar! At each other, at perfect strangers and, after a couple of hours of Nicky Silver’s dark comedy, newly opened at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre, it seems at the audience as well. The family Lyons ...

A social satire about the building of Dodger Stadium.

Karen WeinsteinFebruary 7, 2015Los Angeles, CA The question is "Can you tell the players without a scorecard?" No, I do not mean the one player on the field. Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers since long before they arrived in Los Angeles, cheerfully gives the ...

This whodunit is more vaudeville tag team with sight gags and slapstick punctuated by music and song.

Lynne FriedmannFebruary 6, 2015CA, “Murder for Two” is a freewheeling, raucous ride not unlike the thrill of a downhill soapbox derby tempered by the sudden realization that your race car really could use a good set of brakes. A two-person whodunit, there’s murder ...

A melodrama of love, loss and love

Nancy S. BishopFebruary 1, 2015Chicago, IL The setting is an insular Italian-American community on the Gulf Coast in 1950. Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Rose Tattoo,” is a tragicomic tale of love lost and love gained. Its Sicilian characters are superstitious and passionate in their joy and ...

Nancy S. BishopJanuary 29, 2015Chicago, IL Four survivors sit huddled around a fire, which provides the only light on the scene. They're dressed in grungy grays and tans. Matt (Daniel Desmarais) is recreating a story from the past: an episode from “The Simpsons”. Jenny (Leah Urzendowski) ...

This musical take-off on 1940s film noir has a toe-tapping score and three nimble actors playing a cast of characters.

Lynne FriedmannJanuary 26, 2015San Diego, CA Welcome to the Red Eye Lounge, where the lights are low, booze bottles near empty and a woman with a past is about to meet a man with no future in the satisfying musical “Gunmetal Blues,” onstage at the North ...